


Not The End Of The World

by TreacleA



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Asexual Relationship, Domestic Fluff, Gen, UST without the S, drunken snark, just two idiots in love, no-one should have to buy milk, post notpocalyse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-15
Updated: 2019-08-15
Packaged: 2020-09-01 08:36:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20255269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TreacleA/pseuds/TreacleA
Summary: For quite a long time after the much-prophesied and hugely anticipated “End Of The World” didn’t happen, nothing much else happened either...





	Not The End Of The World

**Author's Note:**

> _I wrote this little one-shot just after watching GO for the first time, with the idea I'd write a longer story. It ended up just being this though. Hopefully it's short but sweet._

For quite a long time after the much-prophesied and hugely anticipated “End Of The World” didn’t happen, nothing much else happened either.

Aziraphale, who was used to receiving at least two relatively complex (and frankly bothersome) assignments from Head Office per week, initially found this new reality somewhat disconcerting. The first week he spent - mostly out of habit - hanging around his shop, absent-mindedly rearranging the books in the various sections by size and width and then, a little later in the week, by hue and texture. The second week he attempted an ambitious reorganisation of Philosophy and Theology, following up with a somewhat impulsive series of purchases for Cryptozoology, the latest one of which he was still locked in a furious online battle over on Thursday afternoon at ten to five. Despite being a creature made entirely of light, Aziraphale was quite well-versed in the dark art of curses, and was seriously considering inflicting a particularly nasty one on_ @BookSlut1972_ when the jangle of the bookshop’s bell thankfully interrupted him. 

Crowley’s familiar dark, angular frame slid carelessly around the doorframe, looking for all the world like someone discovering the bookshop for the first time, purely by accident. His affectedly casual air was somewhat marred however by the fact that he was soaked to the skin.

“Can you believe this??” he said, with the kind of high-pitched, self-righteous fury that he normally only reserved for football matches and last orders at the pub. And when the angel didn’t immediately make a sound of agreement, flapped his arms up and down at his sides dramatically. 

“Can’t even avoid bloody raindrops now!” 

“Ah!”

Aziraphale’s soft sound was one of sudden recognition,

“Well, I suppose it could be worse. Restriction of All Supernatural Abilities is a relatively low-level punishment, don’t you think? All things considered.” 

Making a sound like an angry wild pig, Crowley stalked across the room and flung himself haphazardly into a chair, before glowering at him over his sunglasses.

“So what about you?”

The slitted pupils in his golden eyes narrowed, and Aziraphale tried not to squirm self-consciously under his gaze.

“What…about me?”

Crowley’s lips thinned,

“Don’t play dumb with me, angel. You still on Heaven's payroll this month, or not?”

Aziraphale sighed,

“I believe I too may have been relieved of some - if not all - of my abilities.”

His shoulders slumped a little and his voice rose to something like a whine,

“Would you believe that this morning, I actually had to go out and…_buy milk_?”

Crowley’s head jerked backwards on his neck in a pantomime of disbelieving horror,

“That’s just barbaric,” the demon muttered, and the angel nodded his head vigorously in agreement.

“And I’m wondering, what’s next? I mean am I going to be expected to start _paying bills_? Earning money?” His eyes widened further, “Good lord, do you think I’ll have to vacuum??”

“Surely heaven couldn’t be that cruel?”

“They _did_ try to destroy me with hellfire.”

“True.”

“Surely it’s just temporary though? Don’t you think? A slap on the wrist? They can’t mean to…leave us like this? Like…_mere mortals_ for heaven’s sake?”

The demon hummed in a non-committal kind of way, and tapped the side of one shoe against the coffee table. A deep frown line had formed above his glasses and noticing it, Aziraphale found himself suddenly feeling a little nervous.

“Crowley? Something wrong?”

Crowley’s lips pursed in thought, and the frown line grew a little deeper. The long fingers laced together in his lap twitched, then - as if shaking off an invisible covering of snow - he sat upright in his seat.

“Gotta be closing up time by now hasn’t it? Fancy that Ethiopian place again, the one round the corner?”

Crowley’s curious mood did not dissipate, despite - as the angel observed - his obvious attempts to smother his emotions with his usual tried-and-tested method of vast-amounts-of-alcohol. As he himself hadn’t had more than a glass of champagne since the night of the (averted) apocalypse, Aziraphale was particularly mindful of his own limits. Even so his own head felt fuzzier than normal as they left the restaurant.

“S’late,” Crowley muttered, staring confusedly up at the sky, and then around him in surprise at the passersby.

Soho was its usual busy self of course, but being a Thursday, and rainy and out of tourist season, the streets weren’t thronging quite as usual. Even so, the angel couldn’t help but feel his friend seemed uncharacteristically unsettled by the people around them.

Feeling his own vague sense of anxiety returning, Aziraphale hesitated before laying hand gently on his arm. 

“Why not come back for a little while?” 

He saw Crowley’s amber eyes move rather unsteadily downwards to first focus on the hand on his sleeve, and then slowly crawl their way up to fix on his face.

“Wha’ for?”

Under his yellow stare, Aziraphale’s words failed him for a moment,

“Well. Perhaps just for a co…”

He hesitated again, fully aware that ‘for a coffee’ really was one of the most awful human clichés, and that Crowley had never been one to ignore an opportunity for innuendo.

Before he could come up with something marginally less suggestive though, the demon was leaning in against him and grunting his acquiescence.

“Yeah, alright then…”

He sighed, and his nose tucked in against his shoulder tickled Aziraphale's neck in a way that - rather confusingly - made him feel a bit hot.

“ ‘Spose I could always crash on the sofa,” he muttered. 

“Of course.”

“After the…_coffee_.”

“After the coffee."

“Do we need to get milk though?”

“No, I got some this…_oh_. Oh yes, very funny, Crowley.”

At around this point in the evening of course, they would normally have both chosen to sober up.

Drinking, and the process of getting drunk, were all well and good, but the reality of being drunk, the feeling when all the units you’d consumed throughout the evening slid forward and hit your central nervous system like a slow inexorable plane-crash, was horrid. Aziraphale has only experienced really prolonged drunkenness a couple of times in his six thousand years of life, and frankly that had been quite enough. Crowley, he knew, had experimented a great deal more than he had (particularly during the sixties), but as he watched him fold like a badly made origami swan onto his sofa, he wondered if even he might have finally reached his limit. 

“Can I get you anything my dear?” 

Crowley gurgled something softly. It may or may not have been an attempt at an English word.

“Did you actually…want a coffee?”

“No. Best not. Stomach…not…best not.”

A soft exhale against the sofa cushions,

“Thank you...angel.”

“Alright then.”

Standing in the doorway, Aziraphale paused for a moment before returning to the sofa and, reaching up, pulled the blanket from the backrest and drew it over his friend. As he folded the fringe back from his face, Crowley’s pale fingers moved out to close around his own, and one amber eye cracked open.

“You’re right y’know. Could have been a lot worse,” he said, half into the cushion, and his fingers flexed.

His thumb stroked Aziraphale’s palm, and tracking the movement, the angel swallowed. The place in his chest where his heart was located felt suddenly very strange. Tight and oddly jumpy.

“Yes, a _lot_ worse. We could both have been killed. I think we should really consider ourselves very lucky.”

His hand felt warm in Crowley’s gentle grip. He thought perhaps he should try and extricate it, but then realised it actually felt rather nice there, so instead sunk down to sit beside him on the edge of the sofa.

“And so what if we can’t perform miracles any more? Is that really such a hardship?”

Crowley’s eye opened a fraction wider, focusing and then un-focusing on his face.

“After all, I mean...the humans manage just fine, don’t they?”

The angel smiled softly, and then - suddenly inspired - exclaimed,

“It’ll be a bit like camping!”

Crowley snorted,

“You hate camping.”

“Well, yes. But I like the outdoors!” 

“Yeah, but only from the indoors.”

Aziraphale opened his mouth to object, before stopping himself. It really was far too late for an argument, and Crowley’s body - whether Crowley knew it himself yet or not - was sorely in need of some rest and recuperation.

Withdrawing his hand, he let it rest for a moment on the demon’s cool, slightly clammy cheek. 

“Come, dear boy. Get some sleep now.”

A soft hum, and a nod into the cushions, and then a squirm, a murmur as he moved away.

“Could have been…_lot worse_…lot worse,” Crowley said, “An’ s’not exactly the end of the world is it?"

Aziraphale was in the living room doorway with his hand on the light switch when he said the very last part, and perhaps - had his hearing ability still been of a supernatural being rather than that of a roughly fifty year old man who’d spent rather too much time at the symphony sat close to the orchestra pit - he might even have heard him. 

“Being human, I mean. Not if it’s with you.” 

THE END


End file.
